Rideau Hall, Thursday, December 13, 2007

It gives Jean-Daniel and me great pleasure to spend the evening in the company of creators and ardent defenders of culture. It is always a joy to celebrate books and reading.

What with the proliferation of mass technologies, some predicted that books would die a slow death, that their rawest components— paper and binding—would become obsolete and that reading would no longer attract but a few devotees, a “happy few,” to quote Stendhal.

But such a claim underestimates the intimate relationships that readers have with books.

It also minimizes the role that reading plays in our lives, not to mention the role played by you, the writers and creators without whom we would not have books.

Opening a book is like making a new friend. It is a friendship that sometimes develops slowly, but more often with curiosity and great pleasure, which is just one of the reasons why reading is such a joy.

When you open a new book, your first instinct might be to bury your nose in its pages, inhaling the scent of the paper and ink. Or is that just me?

Or maybe you hold books close to your heart, protecting them as though they were rare and precious objects, which they are.

I cannot imagine a more delightful companion than a book that captivates and moves me, a book that takes my breath away with its promise of freedom, discovery, and adventure.

Reading allows us to get lost in words and phrases, to visit worlds that others have invented, to travel through time and space, to gain new knowledge and to hear new ideas.

From the dazzling white glare of the page or computer screen, you set out on a voyage through a world that is entirely of your own making.

And it is when you get to the heart of the matter, to those universal truths, that you lead us down unexpected, unimagined and brilliant paths.

A fair wind then fills the sails on the ships of our souls. A wider horizon opens before us and we can suddenly grasp the intangible and give voice to the ineffable.

Reading allows us to broaden our lives and to live not just one life, but two lives, thousand of lives.

Literature plays a major role in our daily lives but it is also a great challenge, a challenge to those women and men striving to look past appearances.

At this Art Matters held in concert with these literary awards, I said it then and I repeat it tonight, I strongly believe that literature is essential in our society, a society in which we too often sacrifice reflection, the search for meaning and an understanding of the world in favour of speed, profit, and entertainment at all costs.

I believe that books are one of our last defences in a world that is caught up in its quest for urgency and is too often reduced to the lowest common denominator.

Books give us the chance to flex the muscles of our minds.

They reflect life in all of its complex and diverse forms.

Books allow us to question our certainties and popular beliefs.

They transcend boundaries, barriers, and borders.

The works written by the laureates we are celebrating today are proof positive of that.

Let us pay tribute to the talented authors and creators whose books have been the cherished companions of my husband, our daughter, and I these past few weeks:

Michael Ondaatje and Sylvain Trudel for their works of fiction;

Don Domanski and Serge Patrice Thibodeau for their poetry;

Daniel Danis and Colleen Murphy for their plays;

Annette Hayward and Karolyn Smardz Frost for their works of non-fiction;

François Barcelo and Iain Lawrence for writing children's literature, and Geneviève Côté and Duncan Weller for illustrating children's literature;

And finally, Lori Saint-Martin, Paul Gagné and Nigel Spencer for their translations.

Tonight, we celebrate literature in all its richness and diversity.

Congratulations and thank you to our authors, poets, illustrators and translators.

Through your works, your words and images, you give us a gift that nothing and no one can take away: the freedom to think, imagine and reinvent the world along with you.